BIG BROTHER: The Surveillance Speech: A Low Point in Barack Obama’s Presidency – Conor Friedersdorf – The Atlantic

BIG BROTHER: The Surveillance Speech: A Low Point in Barack Obama’s Presidency – Conor Friedersdorf – The Atlantic

And yet, there are many who still think Obama is a good president because he’s better than McCain would have been.  

That’s kind of like saying vomit is a good food because it’s better than eating feces.

This is a nice deconstruction of Obama’s bullshit, which half the country seems to swallow hook, line, and sinker.

Obama has taken away as much civil liberty as Bush at this point, if not more.

Great job.

LINK URL: http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/08/the-surveillance-speech-a-low-point-in-barack-obamas-presidency/278565/

 

POLICE STATE: FBI agent states all telephone calls recorded [or at least transcribed] and accessible to the US government

POLICE STATE: FBI agent states all telephone calls recorded [or at least transcribed] and accessible to the US government

Stasi? KGB? Nah, just ‘Murica.

As for the various debates about if there is space to hold it all…. Of course there is, but also: Convert it to text and there’s no more space issues. There’s not a problem with archiving every word said by every person, ever. It’s audio and video that take up a lot of space.

Anyway… after the IRS just admitted it could read our email without a warrant… And after previous whistleblowing … it’s become clear that the people closer to the truth are the Big Brother Conspiracy Theorists, not the Government Apologists.

And yes, the Obama Administration has a direct hand in making things worse, not better.

Daniel H adds:

As a result of this “expanding array of theater airborne and other sensor networks,” as a 2007 Department of Defense report puts it, the Pentagon is attempting to expand its worldwide communications network, known as the Global Information Grid, to handle yottabytes (1024 bytes) of data. (A yottabyte is a septillion bytes—so large that no one has yet coined a term for the next higher magnitude.)

It needs that capacity because, according to a recent report by Cisco, global Internet traffic will quadruple from 2010 to 2015, reaching 966 exabytes per year. (A million exabytes equal a yottabyte.) In terms of scale, Eric Schmidt, Google’s former CEO, once estimated that the total of all human knowledge created from the dawn of man to 2003 totaled 5 exabytes. 
—–

This type of facility, if actually scaled up to yottabyte level, could EASILY handle all voice communication on the commercial telephone network. And this isn’t a tinfoil fantasy, it’s being built right now. 

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/03/ff_nsadatacenter/all/

 LINK URL: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/may/04/telephone-calls-recorded-fbi-boston/print

 

 

POLITICS: Noam Chomsky: Obama’s Attack on Civil Liberties Has Gone Way Beyond Imagination

POLITICS: Noam Chomsky: Obama’s Attack on Civil Liberties Has Gone Way Beyond Imagination

A great interview with a great man.

At least some people on the left can acknowledge that Obama is not really left or liberal.

The amazing part is how people just plug their fingers into their ears and pretend like none of this is real.

LINK URL: http://www.alternet.org/civil-liberties/noam-chomsky-obamas-attack-civil-liberties-has-gone-way-beyond-imagination?ak_proof=1&akid=.20860.o8hxm8&rd=1&src=newsletter831496&t=9&paging=off

 

OBAMA ADMINISTRATION: Executive Order Grants US Gov’t New Powers Over Communication Systems

OBAMA ADMINISTRATION: Executive Order Grants US Gov’t New Powers Over Communication Systems

Obama: Continually proving himself as bad for civil rights as George W. Bush ever was. 

Seizing private communications facilities so that they are silenced? Really?

This is unconstitutional, anti-American, police-state bullshit. The type I’ve come to expect from Obama & Bush.

But oh. It’s to make us safer from a terrorist attack, right? So it’s okay, then. Just like the internet kill switch is okay! When Iran/Libya/Egypt seize communcations, it’s bad. When we do it, it’s good. America, fuck yeah.

And don’t say this was already law, or the executive order would have not been needed. If someplace is communicating something that actually incites violence, there are already laws in place to deal with that.

LINK URL: http://yro.slashdot.org/story/12/07/10/1611237/executive-order-grants-us-govt-new-powers-over-communication-systems?utm_source=feedburnerGoogle+Reader&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Slashdot%2Fslashdot+%28Slashdot%29&utm_content=Google+Reader